Disclosure: Meeple Mountain received a free copy of this product in exchange for an honest, unbiased review. This review is not intended to be an endorsement.
Even the big-brained fans of titles such as High Frontier 4 All need a break from time to time.
Pax Viking Junior, a family-weight version of the title’s big brother, Pax Viking, hit shelves in 2024. An exploration game for players ages 6 and up, Pax Viking Junior distills most of the gameplay in Pax Viking into a very straightforward affair and focuses on something kids love: cats!
Over a series of turns, players move their longship token to different regions in order to make friends with other farm animals and household pets (and yes, even the rules describe this process as “taking over friends”). These friends include mountain goats, fish, horses and cows, each represented on animal tiles that are placed into empty regions during a player’s turn.
If a region does not have an animal tile, the region’s first visitor gets to add one to the map, giving that player control of the region and the animal token there as a friend. Future visitors can take over the region using a cute takeover mechanic by adding more kitten tokens from the active player’s supply, or dropping one of a player’s two “Big Cat” tokens into the region, which scares the kitten tokens of all other players away and locks that region for the rest of the game (Big Cats can’t move).
Five public victory card missions (four in an advanced variant) are available to all players; when any player has met the conditions of even a single victory card, that player wins the game. In this way, strategy gamers are probably taking a deep breath as they re-read that last sentence…yes, in my plays, luck of the draw was a major factor in determining the winner.
“That Cat is Quick!”
Pax Viking Junior really isn’t much more than that. This means that it is perfect for game night with younger players (I only played this with my wife and children), especially kids with a shorter attention span…which, as all parents know, is ALL kids.
Of course, with a game geared for players of all levels, that’s the point. As a game geared to younger players, I literally taught the game from the rulebook by reading aloud the two simple pages of rules and the turn structure…my nine-year-old had this down before I finished reading. Turns are fast, and four-player games of Pax Viking Junior should only take about 20 minutes.
This allows for families to play Pax Viking Junior once or twice very easily within an hour. And as a game experience, the light nature of play makes everything feel breezy, although I’m the first to admit that I was looking at the back cover’s “Optional Rules” section after even the first play to add more weight to the game by making a couple of changes.
(For strategy gamers playing with their kids, use the optional rules, which includes the removal of the two red-background victory cards that allow someone to win by collecting 12 scrolls or 12 “silfr”, Viking money. Because two of the playable factions give a boost to a player whenever they collect scrolls or money, this levels the playing field and will push players into a slightly longer version of an already short game. Also, use the Map Limitations variant so that the map is scaled down based on player count, to encourage more interaction.)
I enjoyed Pax Viking Junior, but I think the game would have landed better with younger kids. The main Ion lineup fits so well with my family now that I have actually shown High Frontier 4 All’s introductory variant Space Diamonds to one of my kids in addition to a few other titles, as well as titles ranging from StegegetS Moomin to Dawn on Titan to Dino Dynasty. For adult players with younger children, Pax Viking Junior is worth a look.
